


The Ugly Side of Finnick Odair

by KnightNight7203



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, gratuitous use of m dashes because I can't write any other way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 10:36:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25469404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KnightNight7203/pseuds/KnightNight7203
Summary: It turns out that the hot-headed boy who clawed his way out of the Arena is never quite as buried beneath all the Capitol makeup as he’d like to pretend.In which Finnick turns rebel—for Annie, for humanity, and for himself.
Relationships: Annie Cresta/Finnick Odair
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

The thing about Annie is, she’s worth it all.

All it takes is one look at her face to remind him—he’d die for her. (He does die, a little bit every day he’s away, but he’d never tell her that, of course. For Annie, he’d suffer an eternity in silence.)

But the corresponding thing about Finnick is this: the longer he goes without seeing her face, the easier it becomes to forget. And when he forgets … well, it turns out that the hot-headed boy who clawed his way out of the Arena is never quite as buried beneath Capitol makeup and itchy skintight leather as he’d like to pretend.

They ask him to turn rebel on a day he’s on his way to forgetting. He’s been here for over a week—rented out all night and dozing the afternoons away in a lightly-drugged haze—and he can’t even take out her photograph and stare at it because he just _knows_ there’s a new camera somewhere in his room that he hasn’t found yet. He does conjure up her image in that moment—how could he not—but he doesn’t picture her safely at home waiting for him like he usually does. (He also doesn’t picture her being dragged into a windowless train car by men with guns bigger than she is, his other most-common fantasy (nightmare) that situates her as the star.)

No, a mesmerizing new vision washes over him instead: she’s sitting on a blanket on the beach in the moonlight, long after curfew, and there’s no barbed wire or searchlights or helicopters patrolling the shore a few hundred feet out at sea. Her hair is down. Her eyes are closed. There’s music wafting over from the town, and laughter hanging in the air, and he knows without being told that they’ve met here every day for weeks—months, even—without ever being stopped or interrupted.

He’s not called away by Snow. She’s not threatened because he made an innocent mistake. For the first time he sees their life without the Capitol—simple and quiet and free—and he _needs_ it like he’s never needed a single other thing in this cold broken world.

He was always going to say yes. But, since they’ve caught him at his worst, it’s just that much easier in the end.

“And here I thought you just wanted to fuck me like everybody else,” he says lightly to the man standing before him—a Plutarch Heavensbee that seems smaller, somehow, than even the thumbnail on the gossip magazine discarded on the table. Five minutes ago, he would have said something polite and coy instead, like, “I was under the impression that you simply wanted the pleasure of my company.” But now he’s been given a gift of unimaginable power in this exchange. He’s free—for maybe the first time in nearly ten years—to call it exactly as he sees it.

Heavensbee looks slightly nervous, like he’s maybe realizing this too, and Finnick thinks, _Good._ It’s becoming increasingly clear that a unique kind of Capitol citizen stands before him—one who, for all his faults, still somehow recognizes some basic tenets of morality. And yet he’s still more than happy to use him as a proxy for someone like Snow, just for a second.

 _God_ , wouldn’t he like to see Snow squirm.

(That’s not why he does it, of course. But it’s definitely going to be a perk somewhere down the road.)

“Why me?” he asks.

Plutarch wets his lips. “Access,” he says, delicately, and Finnick snorts.

“Right.” To think he’d been hoping that someone had finally recognized him for something—literally anything—else. His brains, maybe, or at least his nerve. He used to be the kid who was _good_ at things—weaving nets, reading aloud, always the first one back on the water after a big storm. But nobody’s known him for any of that in years.

“ _And_ because we thought, if anyone has a reason to hate the Capitol…” Heavensbee adds, and Finnick grins slowly. That works, too.

“You should talk to Johanna Mason, then,” he mutters offhandedly—just joking, really, and his heart seizes when he sees Heavensbee make a little note with a glittering pen. But Johanna’s a big girl, she can make her own decisions. She told him, once: _Finnick, you can’t save everyone._

(She was talking about a tribute, probably, but he figures the sentiment would apply to herself as well.)

(Because he’s a petty person, he revels just a little bit in the exasperation he knows she’ll feel if she ever does find out what he’s doing now.)

“So who’s running this operation?” he asks, just for the sake of talking, because he hasn’t been dismissed yet and he doesn’t know if he can leave. He’s not used to simply strolling out of Capitol penthouses at his leisure. Plus, for all he knows someone could be watching the building. He’s not sure he’s been in here long enough for the things he’s normally summoned for to have plausibly concluded.

“Myself.” Heavensbee takes a pretentious little bow. “Along with a few others.” He shrugs apologetically. “We’ll maintain some degree of anonymity for the time being, for obvious reasons.”

Finnick whistles, leaning against the wall. “And yet they send you out to do the recruiting?” Heavensbee may not be flashy, but he’s still _big_ —he comes from an old Capitol family, he’s been a gamemaker for years, and there have been whispers of a big promotion on the horizon if the stars align just right during the next few games.

“Not for everyone.”

“Well, aren’t I special,” Finnick says, and Heavensbee chuckles.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, son. We all think you might be.”

Finnick thinks about the last person who told him he was special—she was the wife of some high-up military official, all over-bleached hair and chemically smoothed skin and diamonds inlaid right into the skin of her pinched, tattooed eyelids. Her words had meant nothing to him, obviously, and Finnick had been distracted soon after by certain activities involving whipped cream and a live snake.

But then—after it was done—she had rolled over and told him where her husband was that particular evening. Not only that, but she had also told him why. She recounted how he’d been called to District 11 when a rebel had blown up a grain shipment. Then she told him they suspected there were were more—just waiting for the opportune moment to strike. One in the mayor’s office, maybe even the second in command. One in the fields. The one they’d found had worked at the pub—a central location where he could easily connect with almost anyone in the district.

And Finnick didn’t even have to ask.

Now, it’s very clear how valuable this information could be in the hands of someone like Heavensbee—and he is, for better or for worse, uniquely situated to obtain it. Sure, he’s in the right spot. But he’s also spent years fine-tuning the necessary seduction skills, and a reputation to boot—these people have no reason to distrust him, and they want to impress him. To gain his favor.

Maybe it’s time he makes a new name for himself: _Finnick Odair, whose anger and cunning toppled empires._

“You’re right,” he tells Heavensbee, “I am special.”

And just like that, he’s all in.

* * *

The next day, he’s twenty minutes late for his last client of the trip. It’s partly an honest mistake—he gets held up in Remake when the power in one of the wings goes down, and there’s terrible traffic going into the West Side, with people crowding the streets to buy some new perfume or photograph a hot new musician or something.

But it’s partly his own little act of rebellion, too. If he drags his feet on the sidewalk—if he climbs 42 flights of stairs instead of speeding upwards in the elevator—what is Snow going to do? He won’t kill him—he’s proved himself too valuable. He won’t kill Annie either, despite his many threats—because then he’d have no leverage to stop Finnick from doing something _really_ bad. The way he sees it, the President’s hands are tied.

He apologizes a few times as the man in the dark room all but rips his shirt off him—always the gentlemen, right?—but inside, he still feels defiant. Before, his behavior had to be literally flawless to guarantee a long, peaceful life. But now, he just has to be good enough—to hang on until he gets enough information, and Heavensbee gets enough supporters, and then they can end this freak show once and for all.

Despite the hands pawing at him, he feels untouchable now.

On the train, he scrubs his face with burning-hot water and rolls up his collar. He’s doing this for Annie, always—but it all pales compared to the thought of actually seeing her once again.


	2. Chapter 2

Annie doesn’t touch him when he gets back, and that’s how he knows she knows.

Well. She’s known something for a while now. She lived in this world too. But it’s how he can tell she’s figured out how bad it actually is these days—it’s like the moment when a bubble pops, and the world outside the little fantasy he’s been living in since last night comes rushing back at him, full speed ahead.

She doesn’t pick him up at the train station in the morning, and she’s not waiting outside the house, either—though that by itself isn’t terribly strange. On bad days, the jostling crowds at the center of town set her off, and she told him once the way the sun glints off the water outside throws off her perception of danger, makes her see weapons in the periphery and react desperately. But when he sees her sitting stiffly at the table, eyes staring blankly ahead—that’s when he knows something has changed in the worst way.

She normally curls into him the second he gets home, even if she’s hanging on by a thread—even if she’s hysterical, or shutting down, or can barely recognize where she is. There’s never been a moment she hasn’t let him play with her hair and rock her back and forth and watch her slowly come back to herself.

There’s a first for everything, though. Six years is a long time to keep a secret—this gentle peace was never going to last forever.

“Hey,” he says—this may not be the joyful reunion he’d been envisioning during his long night on the train, but his voice doesn’t waver, so there’s that.

She bites her lip and doesn’t say anything.

“It’s good to see you,” he whispers, throwing down his bags and setting about making tea. He keeps his distance—to avoid startling her, maybe, or just to protect himself. In his head, he’s already going over and over his last few days in District 4 before Snow’s summons came. They’d spent an afternoon at the market. They’d baked bread. She’d chased him around the house for forgetting to wash the dishes, and he’d carried her out and thrown her right into the sea when she caught him, still in her clothes.

He had packed his bag after she was already asleep the last night, so he didn’t have to waste any time he had with her.

So what had he given away?

Slowly, as the water boils and he slides down onto the floor with his warm mug cradled in his hands, she adjusts to his presence. First her fists unclench. Then her knees come down from her chest.

“I planned out this conversation all morning,” she whispers finally. She’s still not looking at him. “I was going—I was going to tell you—“

“You can tell me anything,” he says, when it becomes clear she’s not going to go on. But she doesn’t speak. Instead, she picks up a booklet from the corner of the table and tosses it down to him. Finnick sets his mug down before picking it up—and thank God he did, because otherwise, he’s sure he would have spilled tea all over the linoleum.

It’s a magazine from the Capitol—maybe the same one that Plutarch Heavensbee had thrown aside in his dining room, he isn’t sure. But the cover of this particular issue is plastered with a shot of his face, and the headline reads: _District Four Darling Caught at Scandalous Bacchanal Ball_. He remembers the day—a little over a week ago, Snow had sent him to entertain at a private party right at the edge of the red light district. The night was long, and rough, and awkward—it had probably made the list of worst moments of his life, until this current one came along and booted it right out of the running.

There aren’t really any explicit photos, which is the one small mercy. The article is mostly candids of people walking in and out the door. But—it’s a _lot_ of people. And because it’s the Capitol, and people there aren’t subtle—because he’s something of a prize, these days—it’s clear what they were all there for.

It’s funny—he always thought he would cry when this day came, but in reality, he kind of just wants to sleep.

He sits there numbly, wondering how a Capitol tabloid like this found it’s way out here—wondering if there’s someone he can sue, or maybe bribe, to make sure it never happens again. He has more money than he’ll ever need anyway. Then he reads the address on the back, and it’s not even his, or Annie’s. It’s addressed to one Coriolanus Snow.

He builds the scenario easily in his head: Snow sent this directly, and he didn’t even try to hide it—because of what Finnick did yesterday, of course, because he slipped up. One little mistake and the President swooped in to remind them all of the precarious arrangement they’ve struck—some willingly, and others (until now) completely unaware. This is what’s at stake—their life here. _Annie_ ’s life.

And this is just the initial threat. He can only imagine the ways it will escalate from here.

For a moment—just a fraction of a heartbeat—he’s ready to give it all up already. He wants to say that this is entirely Heavensbee’s fault—for making him dangerously overconfident, for breaking down the careful persona he wears in the Capitol to keep them safe. As if it wasn’t his own carelessness and lack of regard for consequences that brought them here. He should never have forgotten: there are other fates besides death, and sometimes even worse ones.

Without the idea of rebellion—without that blinding hope—perhaps he could have prolonged this moment indefinitely. Mags has always known, and he expected some of the more well connected in 4 to find out eventually, but Annie has always been so far removed from it all. She shelters herself for her own protection, and in turn, protected him.

And yet—without a rebellion, he’ll never escape the potential for future betrayals, either. Snow hasn’t exactly become more reasonable in his old age—if anything, it becomes easier by the year to set him off.

He knows now, though—he knows to be more careful. If anything, the risks are higher than ever.

“So what exactly did you think I was doing there?” he asks her when he finds his voice again. He regrets his tone immediately, because he never meant to be confrontational about this, but maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. Annie doesn’t shut down when she’s angry—just when she’s scared, or sad.

If she has to be angry with him to get through this, he doesn’t mind one bit.

“Less, at least,” she says, glaring at him.“ I mean, Jesus _—fifteen_ , Finnick?”

There are things he could say to that— _not all at once,_ maybe—but he’s not sure that will actually make it any better. He glances at his tea, just beside his left elbow, but his hands are shaking too badly to retrieve it.

“It used to be just one or two,” she continues. And he can see her putting two and two together, and he doesn’t _want_ her to, but there’s probably no way to avoid it now.

“Well, I guess that was before—“

“Before you and Snow made a deal about me? Behind my back?”

Yeah, actually. Before that.

Now he’s the one who’s quiet, and she’s the one who’s talking at him despite his unwillingness to engage. “I convinced myself I was wrong,” she says slowly, coming down from her chair to crouch in front of him. “I thought, you wouldn’t do something like that without talking to me first. I thought I was lucky not to be noticed, and that you didn’t have a choice about it all—“

“I didn’t have a choice,” he says. “I had to.”

She scoffs. But Finnick knows it’s true.

See, he doesn’t know how much she remembers, but Snow made arrangements for Annie exactly twice before Finnick managed to step in. The first, on the last night of her Victory Tour, had left her unable to speak for well over a week. As her mentor, Finnick had been forced to give her speech for her on the steps of Snow’s mansion.

Then, during the second time, she’d almost bitten off the ear of one of her only sponsors. She’d fled that liaison mid-appointment, and Finnick had been tased twice trying to stop the Peacekeepers from dragging her back through the streets, only half-dressed, by her hair.

Maybe she would have adapted. Knowing Annie, she could have mastered even the art of high society sex slavery in no time. But seeing her so vulnerable, even just for a little while—and after all she’d been through already—it was more than Finnick could bear.

He’d fallen madly in love with her the first time he saw her, even if it took that realization a while to penetrate his thick skull. By that point, weeks into their lightning friendship and overjoyed reunion, he was completely helpless.

“I don’t regret it,” he tells her now. “You know I would do anything for you.”

“And I would do anything for you,” she retorts, somehow making that sentiment a lot less sweet than it should be. “Except you never let me, and that’s not fair.”

These days, he’s barely home enough to “let” her do much of anything—and sometimes, he wonders if that isn’t part of the problem. Annie knows as much about the monster that is the Capitol as anyone—knows it better, probably, than the pastel-powdered airheads who call it home. But this far away from it all—missing him, feeling helpless—well, it’s easy enough to think you want something just because the alternative is slowly driving you mad.

“The only way I can get through it all is knowing you’re safe,” he says, pleadingly. She doesn’t have to thank him—he’s not doing it for that—but he needs her to understand. He’ll beg if he has to.

But she just scoots back and shakes her head.

“I don’t need rescued,” she spits at him angrily. “Not like this.”

She sits there on the floor across from him, just out of reach, and alternates her glare between somewhere around his ear and the offending magazine. If she was a cat, her fur would be on end. He’s surprised she isn’t hissing—but he gets it, too.

Nobody’s ever rescued Annie before—not when her parents died and she was left to care for her grandmother on her own, not during the last big flood before her Games when she had to haul gallons of rainwater out of her old house, and certainly not when she was reaped. She’s got kind of a complex about the whole idea anyway: ever since that first day in the Arena, when she watched Anchor get beheaded right in front of her—even though he had to die for her to win, even though she wasn’t close enough to intervene—she’s been tormenting herself about the shapeless horror of watching someone else she cares about get hurt and not being able to stop it.

They don’t really talk about their many, many nightmares, because that’s an unnecessary can of worms at this point. But he’s always been able to tell. She’s in distress—they both are, really—but she doesn’t need a hero to swoop in any more than he does. (And really, at this point, he probably needs one more.)

He might struggle with the idea, but he really _wants_ to respect it. So it gives him a special kind of joy to be able to tell her now: “Maybe that’s true. But this isn’t just about about you anymore.”

Then he regrets his life choices all over again, because she immediately demands to know what exactly that means.

* * *

Annie Cresta would rather die than give up Finnick—or a fledgeling resistance, for that matter. He feels the first within himself as innately as he knows how to breathe, and he knows the second because he knows _her_ —how good she is, how loyal, how just. He’s not worried about the safety of confidential information here.

But here’s the thing—Finnick does not want Annie to die.

He also doesn’t want her to feel guilty, though—at least not more than she already does. So he begins a daring tightrope act, tiptoeing along on the razor edge of a sword: tell Annie enough to make her feel better, to give her hope, but not enough to make her a target. Not enough that anyone would ever suspect they could torture a secret from her, even if (God forbid) they were torturing her for other, more personal reasons.

Honestly, the things he has to plan for. If it wasn’t all so terrifying he would laugh out loud.

“How about I decide what I can and can’t know,” she says snarkily, when it’s clear in about half a dozen sentences that he’s clumsily hiding most of the details from her. Sometimes—very infrequently—he wishes all of his charm didn’t up and abandon him the moment he left the Capitol.

“It’s not really all mine to share,” he tells her, and though that’s not really the issue here, it’s technically true all the same. Snow might scare him more than anyone on Earth, but Heavensbee didn’t exactly leave him feeling cozy inside.

Annie bites her lip again, but this time, to his surprise, it’s almost playful.

“Well, how about, you tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine,” she says hesitantly, giving him a gentle smirk. “Haven’t I just learned that you love secrets?” A flash of white-hot _something_ runs through him—goddamn, it’s too soon, and she really didn’t have to read that entire article. But somehow, he finds himself smiling just a little anyway.

“I don’t want to. I think the risk is too great.”

“But maybe, not everything is up to you,” she shoots back, and just like that he knows he’s going to surrender. He’s never been able to say no to her.

(He’s not great at saying no in general, but this probably isn’t the time to dwell on that.)

“Okay, then. If you insist.”

Her raised eyebrow leaves him no doubt.

So he brings her quickly up to speed on Heavensbee and his new goal at the Capitol—then sits and listens, eyes wide, as she in turn describes her budding friendship with the small team of women who perform illegal abortions behind the butcher’s shop. Apparently, the middle-aged lady who delivers her groceries on bad days has decided that these renegade midwives are another one of her responsibilities to protect. She’s enlisted Annie to help her bake bread and clean medical supplies when they’re overwhelmed by desperate young women who fear future Games more than they fear the Peacekeepers who patrol the streets every day.

“I’m never on site,” Annie explains, sensing his rising panic. “Winnifred just brings everything here. But it makes me feel—it makes me feel useful, I guess? Like I wasn’t just tossed here like some broken thing to collect dust and then fade away.”

That’s not what she is—not at all. He didn’t even know she’d been feeling that way. He wants to reach out to her, more than anything, but he doesn’t know if they’re there yet.

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

“Well, it was a secret,” she begins, trying to stay light, but he shakes his head in warning. “I didn’t want you to worry,” she whispers instead.

He smiles softly. “See, that I understand.”

Annie looks down and picks up the magazine again, much more tenderly this time—she runs a finger over the photo of his face, the wild hair and reddened cheeks and slightly unfocused eyes. He wishes she wouldn’t—but he probably doesn’t look much better right now, so maybe making eye contact with the real thing would be worse for both of them.

“So, does this happen a lot there, then?” she asks. “The pictures, not…” She trails off. Finnick thinks about the flashes, all of the people screaming his name. Annie hasn’t been to the Capitol in a long time.

It’s not the photo that’s the real issue—he’s been captured in far more compromising situations. It’s the fact that this one made its way to her. But he doesn’t know how to explain that there are things that the Finnick of the Capitol can simply brush off, but the Finnick who sits before her in District 4 can barely stand.

“Sometimes,” he says. “It is what it is, I guess.”

Annie tosses the magazine aside.

“I bet that makes all that important spying a bit more complicated,” she says with a tiny grin—one final offer of truce—and in that moment, it’s like a weight has been lifted from his chest. Somehow, she’s taken the one revelation he always feared would overwhelm her every good thought of him, and used it to transform him into more than he’s ever been before.

She moves then, and after a flash of hesitation—enough for him to notice, but not enough for his heart to sink all the way into his stomach—settles herself on his lap, one leg on either side of his waist.She traces a finger down his nose, then his cheek, then moves further down. She straightens his collar, and he thinks she’s outlining the bruises on his neck—he opted to get right on the train instead of stopping by Remake to have them vanished away. But she doesn’t frown, and she doesn’t give the magazine abandoned at their side another glance.

“It’s okay,” he tells her when her fingers slow. And it is.


End file.
